


A Love Like War

by RoseByAnyOtherName17



Series: The Lion, the Wolf and the Dragon [20]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Battle, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Confessions, F/M, First Kiss, Love, Promises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 01:15:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15207608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseByAnyOtherName17/pseuds/RoseByAnyOtherName17
Summary: Arya didn't look back. "Oh, winter is coming, Ser. But you won't be alive to see it descend over your precious castle."*There's a battle.





	A Love Like War

**Author's Note:**

> Everything else about them is a war, isn't it? I really just went with my instincts here. Let me know what y'all think
> 
> title comes from the song by All Time Low

Even though she had known it was coming, sooner or later, she hadn’t stopped to think about _how_ it would happen. There was simply too much going on, so that even when night came and she might have time to consider it, sleep came before she could. Why speculate, she thought later, when he was by her side all along? Next to her at the high table when she was speaking with the Stormlords, peering over her shoulder at the map when they _finally_ got the raven from Daenerys commanding them to march to Highgarden and help end the siege, laying asleep at her side when she crept into his room at night because, after so long of never having him more than a few feet away, sleep would not come to her without him. Asha Greyjoy seemed highly amused by the whole thing, a highborn girl and a bastard smith so entwined with each other that the only time they left each other’s sight was to use the chamber pot. Theon, on the other hand, asked Arya more than once if she was okay, if Gendry was good to her. For all that he had considered her little more than a nuisance in their childhood, he was protective. As annoying as it was, some little part of her warmed at his quiet expressions of concern.

 

None of that changed on the march to Highgarden. With the army of the Stormlands behind her and the Ironborn holding Storm’s End for the time being, Gendry was the only person she wanted riding alongside her at the head of them. Of course, the lords were there as well, offering battle advice which she took in stride, despite not liking them much. They all stared at Gendry with searching eyes, and she heard them whisper about his resemblance to Robert Baratheon. Arya was certain that she herself was not helping matters, what with not even trying to be subtle about sharing a tent with him every night. Lord Penrose commented once, how much they looked like Lyanna Stark and Robert had, so many years ago. Arya answered that she wouldn’t know; she had never met her aunt, and the Robert _she_ knew was fat and drunk every moment of every day. Gendry was big, sure, but his weight was all muscle, twisting under his skin when he moved. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man, and he never drank from the wineskins that were passed around before they slept at night. Arya asked him why once, and he shrugged. “Don’t like the taste,” was all he said, but she suspected he didn’t like the fuzzy feeling it gave him, the way it did her. The need to be sharp and aware, always, had been ingrained in them since they were children. Even man and woman grown, and safer than they had been back then, those instincts did not fade.

 

In any case, she felt like she should have known what would bring it on. Everything else about them had been involved with war in some way: running from it, being captured in it, being torn away from each other by it, meeting again in it, steadily becoming utterly inseparable as it went on. So _of course_ she would see him stumbling toward her, covered in dirt and blood, and be unable to think of doing anything other than drawing him right into her space. Because war could try to split them apart again, but it would never, ever succeed. She had promised him, she had promised herself, she had promised the dragon queen and everyone who ever witnessed them standing just a little too close to each other. Gendry was hers, and she was his, and that was it.

 

**

 

She met with the commander of the Lannister army that surrounded the castle, a man named Bronn. She couldn’t imagine what he had done to impress Cersei enough to let him lead her army; the man was scraggly, with a tangled mustache and a receding hairline. When she asked him his house, he answered, “Don’ have one.” A commoner then, somehow having risen to serve the most powerful woman in Westeros. He seemed content enough to talk to her, enough to tell her that he had met her lady mother in the Eerie and served Tyrion Lannister for a time, and then his brother Jaime when Tyrion was accused of killing Joffrey. “The queen’s letting me have any castle I choose when the dragon bitch is dead,” he told her. “In the meantime, I’ve got all the gold an’ whores I could ask for.”

 

“Tyrion is the Hand of the Queen now,” Arya informed him. “Daenerys is generous. If you fight for her, you’ll get a lot more than a castle.”

 

Bronn shrugged. “Might be,” he conceded, “but the Lannisters always pay their debts. Tyrion paid his a long time ago; I’ve got no business with him anymore, nor his queen.”

 

Arya inclined her head. “Very well,” she said. “But if you survive this battle, I guarantee you won’t survive the war. You’ll be the first man I execute when we free Highgarden from you. You could surrender, but it is as you say: you’ve got no ties to Tyrion anymore. He won’t have a problem with your death.”

 

She turned to go, Gendry behind her, when Bronn called out, “Aren’ you going to tell me your words? The ones that you Starks seem to like saying so much?”

 

Arya didn’t look back when she answered, “Oh, winter is coming, Ser. But you won’t be alive to see it descend over your precious castle.”

 

She kept her dagger with her, but Needle was too thin, too light to be used in anything other than small combat, and she had no doubt that this battle would become very ugly. She was testing out other swords with Gendry that night when Lord Penrose asked her just what she thought she was doing.

 

“Preparing for battle, My Lord,” she replied, turning quickly on her toes to hold the blade up to his throat. She frowned, twisting it away and holding it flat in front of her. “This isn’t right.”

 

“I told you it wouldn’t be.” Gendry took it away and giving her a hand-and-a-half blade instead. “You’re too small for a broadsword, Milady.”

 

“Don’t call me that,” she said automatically, but she was much more pleased with this one when she leaped at Lord Penrose again, catching him completely off guard.

 

Lord Penrose spluttered in a mixture of shock and disapproval. “You mean to fight?”

 

Arya frowned at his confusion. “Of course I do.”

 

At last, Lord Penrose seemed to have found something he wanted to argue with Arya about. “You cannot participate in the battle, My Lady. It is too dangerous for a young girl like yourself.”

 

Arya put down the sword she held and stared at the lord, brow furrowed. “I’ve fought battles before, My Lord. I’m no stranger to fighting.”

 

“This is—”

 

“Different?” Gendry interrupted the lord as he moved around, sheathing the swords Arya had scattered in her quest for a weapon. “My Lord, you’ve watched her beat me in combat at least a dozen times, a man twice her size, whether I fight with a sword or a hammer or any weapon in between. Believe me, Arya is perfectly capable of fighting this battle on her own.”

 

“You should address her with the proper title!” Penrose spat, as though he knew he would not win this argument but needed something to say anyways.

 

“No, he shouldn’t,” Arya told him, standing at her tallest (and knowing it wasn’t much). “Gendry doesn’t answer to me in that way.” She turned away dismissively. “You should get some sleep, Lord Penrose. Tomorrow is going to be bloody, I suspect.”

 

She heard him stamp away and didn’t bother to hide her smile when Gendry narrowed his eyes at her. “You shouldn’t antagonize them that way,” he admonished.

 

“Greater things are at stake than their pride,” Arya shot back. “Besides, it’s true. I’m going to fight whether they like it or not, and you never have to call me anything other than my name.”

 

Gendry accepted the last sheath from Nymeria with a hushed, “Thank you girl,” and then finally stopped moving and just watched Arya for a moment while she fiddled with the sword. “Are you sure this is a battle we can win?” he asked. “Their forces are larger than our own.”

 

“Not by much,” Arya pointed out, “and they’re backed up against the castle.” She frowned. “I do wish it was cold enough that they hadn’t been able to dig trenches, but even so, we have the advantage.”

 

“It’s hardly cold at all,” Gendry agreed. “You can hardly tell that winter is coming.”

 

Arya smiled a little. “You sound like a Stark,” she commented, putting the sword down and helping him straighten up. “‘ _Winter is coming._ ’ The words are comfortable in your mouth; most southerners have a difficult time with them, for some reason.”

 

“Perhaps because you Starks are somewhat terrifying,” Gendry offered. “Tough, guarded, unsmiling with your steel eyes and pale skin.”

 

“Not all Starks look like me,” Arya teased, nudging him. “Robb took after my mother. Sansa, too.” She paused. “And I smile.”

 

“At me,” Gendry allowed. “You smile at me, and Nymeria. Theon, once, maybe. It was hard to tell.”

 

“Shove off,” she said good-naturedly. “I smile at people I like. It’s not my fault that there aren’t many of them left.” Her tone was playful enough, but the smile she wore then faded, became forced. Then it dropped altogether, when she grabbed his wrist and made him look at her. “Which is why you can’t die tomorrow, okay? Or ever. Not until I do.”

 

Gendry huffed a breath that would have been a laugh if he didn’t look so serious. “I don’t think that’s something either of us have control over.”

 

“You aren’t allowed,” Arya insisted. “I forbid it.” It was foolish, she knew it was, but so was running away from Gendry in the first place.

 

He met her gaze steadily, warmth filling his eyes as he cupped the back of her neck and pressed his lips to her forehead. “As Milady commands,” he whispered. “But if I can’t die, you can’t either.”

 

Arya smothered a grin in his shirt. “If you insist.” She felt him smile against her skin. Then there was a loud curse from one of the Stormlords she had only met in passing on the way from Summerhall when he accidentally stepped on Nymeria’s tail and she snapped at him, and Arya had to turn away to deal with that.

 

**

 

The morning dawned bright, clear, with the Lannister army facing toward them instead of away now. That was okay, Arya thought as she methodically went through her morning ritual. It was as it should be.

 

Gendry was tense next to her, all the way up until the men were in their lines and shields were up. Arya didn’t say much to them, letting their Stormlords speak and lead them through their battle cries. She had seen Gendry fight, years ago and much more recently, and it hadn’t changed much. Where she was fluid movement and quick sidesteps, he was brute strength, merciless, but smart enough to know when to hold back and wait. She knew he was ready for this, but she thought to herself that he had never really had time to prepare for battle. When they were a part of the Watch, the Goldcloaks had crept up on them in the night, giving no warning at all. Their escape from Harrenhal was aided by Jaqen H’ghar; Gendry’s time with the Brotherhood was relatively peaceful, and he had come to Riverrun _after_ Arya had taken it with her Northern army. No, this was the first time he had ever been given time to think about what was coming, and it showed in his face.

 

“You know how to do this,” she told him quietly enough that no one else could hear but Nymeria, standing between their horses with her ears cocked forward and teeth bared. “I’ll be at your back the whole time, okay?”

 

Gendry swallowed hard and looked at her. His hair was swept back from his forehead, leaving her nowhere to hide from his blazing eyes, as if she could in the first place. “Arya, I need to say—”

 

“Don’t,” she cut him off, afraid even as the unspoken words filled her with joy. “Not now, okay? After, you can tell me after, because you made me a promise and I made you a promise too, and I intend to uphold that.”

 

Gendry looked pain. “Please,” he said softly.

 

So she reached out a hand and squeezed his, locking their fingers together for a long moment. “I know,” she murmured as the horns began to blare. “Me too.”

 

The thing was, there wasn’t much she remembered about the battle itself. It was all a blur of blood and lion sigils and red, red, red everywhere. There was the sickening rock of her horse being cut out from under her, of leaping over its head to land on the shoulders of a Lannister. She thought she might have stabbed her sword straight down through his head, but she was moving too quickly, and at one vague moment, she realized that she had lost Gendry. She screamed his name over the sound of metal and men dying, but she couldn’t hear his answer, if there was one, and in any case Nymeria was attacking a man who had tried to creep up behind Arya in her moment of alarm. She whirled around, a spinning haze of death. Blood sprayed across her face, into her eyes, but she blinked it away when a man collapsed beside her, an arrow through his neck. She blearily saw that they had driven the Lannisters close enough to the castle that the Tyrell men were shooting them down from the walls, from open windows, even from the tops of the towers that only a few could climb to. _Bran would have done that,_ she thought wildly.

 

Every man she met looked shocked long before she killed him. It happened the same way every time, so much she lost count: they charged her angrily, they hesitated in disbelief when they saw she was a girl, and she cut them down. Sword through his stomach, or across his knees and then through his throat when he was helpless on the ground, through the heart like the Hound had taught her. Her muscles ached in protest, but none of the blood on her body was her own; it all belonged to the men who were unfortunate enough to cross her path.

 

And then, suddenly, there were hardly any men left dressed in red and gold. Bodies littered the ground, from both sides alike, but those with Lannister sigils were kneeling, dropping their swords and axes and hammers and saying, “Yield, I yield!” Some tried to flee; Nymeria didn’t allow them to get far. Even with a broken front leg, she was far quicker than any man or horse, if the soldier had been lucky enough to keep one.

 

Arya was supposed to round up the surrendered men, she knew. She was supposed to find the sellsword Bronn and execute him like she’d promised. There were a lot of things she was supposed to do now, with the sun beginning to fall towards the opposite side of the castle and the Tyrells finally coming out of their stronghold. But all she could do was turn on the spot, searching desperately for one face, because she had made him a promise to be by his side and she had lost him anyways.

 

“Gendry,” she said desperately. “Gendry.” She ignored Lord Penrose when he tried to stop her, slipped out of the grasp of anyone who thought they could comfort her with a touch, stumbled exhaustedly through the men in blue and grey and brown armor in her quest to find his eyes.

 

“Arya,” she heard at last, and she caught him by his forearms when he tumbled headlong into her. He was as sticky with blood as she was, but she knew with horror that some of it was his own when it dripped hotly onto her boots. “Arya,” he mumbled, tilting forward like he couldn’t help it. He was saying something into her hair, too muffled for her to hear, but she got the message all the same and pulled back enough to crush their mouths together, hard, supporting his weight with an arm around his waist and fisting his hair in her free hand. She kept her eyes open long enough to watch his flutter shut, for the lines on his face to smooth out. She watched him until he had to breathe and he cupped her face with a shaky hand. He looked awed, as if he couldn’t believe he was seeing her. She wanted to kiss him again, but his leg was still bleeding and he was listing forward to rest his head on her shoulder heavily, and she had to fix him before she could do that again. It was okay. He’d kept his promise to her.


End file.
